Crime drove away University of New Mexico catcher last year
A talented catcher with two years of junior college ball under his belt, Colton Onstott had committed to play at the University of New Mexico. He spent the fall of 2018 preparing for Division I baseball, living in Albuquerque and getting to know his Lobos teammates.
One early November evening, everything changed.
Onstott competed in the final game of UNM’s annual Cherry-Silver intrasquad series at Santa Ana Star Field and decided to stop at a local grocery store before heading home. When he left the store, Onstott was confronted by two men in the parking lot. “a guy pointed a gun toward me and demanded my phone, wallet and keys. He said, ‘You don’t want to die tonight.’ I gave him my phone, wallet and keys.”
The pickup was found later that night at an Albuquerque shopping center where one suspect was arrested. “My pickup was totaled,” Onstott said. “Apparently they’d driven it through some gates and across a couple of fields. The police called me and I had to go to the station and ID the guy. It was a long night.”
Onstott later called his parents in Sydney, Nebraska, and contacted UNM coach Ray Birmingham to inform them about the incident. A few days later he decided to transfer away from UNM. “Colton was worried because (the robbers) had his phone and wallet, his personal information,” Birmingham said. “He decided he needed to get away from Albuquerque. I hated to see him go, but I couldn’t blame him.”
Onstott finished the semester at UNM, then transferred to Southeast Florida College during winter break. Birmingham helped arrange the transfer. “I didn’t want to leave at first,” Onstott said, “but I talked to my parents and we decided that if something like that could happen, it wasn’t worth my life to stay.
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